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Overview

"Parker's finest in years . . . one can't-put-it-down story. Again . . ." proclaimed San Francisco Chronicle of Robert B. Parker's most recent New York Times bestseller, Small Vices . And The Washington Post Book World agreed, "Small Vices deserves instant inclusion in the Spenser canon." In Sudden Mischief, Parker's stouthearted hero unwillingly takes a case that tests his sleuthing skills-and his commitment to the woman he loves. Brad Sterling-former Harvard football player, ne'er-do-well, and Susan Silverman's long out-of-touch ex-husband-is, by all appearances, a successful businessman. But when, in the course of running a vast fundraiser called Galapalooza, he is charged with sexual harassment, he turns to Susan for help. Though Brad denies the charge, he's desperate, behind in alimony and child-support payments to other exes, and on the verge of dissolution. When Spenser reluctantly agrees to take the case, however, Sterling claims everything is fine-he's free of debt and free of problems. While the harassment charge begins to look more and more specious, Spenser senses there is something wrong with Galapalooza, as leads to charities turn into dead ends. Susan, meanwhile, becomes steadily more problematic as she wrestles with demons reinvigorated by the resurrection of her ex-husband. As the questions mount, Brad disappears, a body is found, and clues to a shadowy mob connection begin to coalesce. Spenser finds himself fighting a two-front war: against some very bad men, on the one hand, and against an increasingly difficult Susan, on the other. Dark, contemplative, and morally complex, Sudden Mischief is a brilliant meditation on the meaning of justice, love, and passion.

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CHAPTER ONE

We were at the Four Seasons Hotel, in the Bristol Lounge. Bob Winter was playing "Green Dolphin Street" on the piano. I was drinking beer and Susan was doing very little with a glass of red wine. There were windows along the Boylston Street side of the room that looked out on the Public Garden, where winter was over, the swan boats were being cleaned, and had there been a turtledove awake at this hour we'd have almost certainly heard his voice.

"I need a favor," Susan said to me.

Her black hair was shiny and smelled slightly of lavender. Her eyes were impossibly big, and full of intelligence and readiness, and something else. The something else had to do with throwing caution to the winds, though I'd never been able to give it a name. People looked at her when she came in. She had the quality that made people wonder if she were someone important. Which she was.

"You know I'm the only guy in the room knows the lyrics to `Green Dolphin Street,'" I said, "and you want me to sing them softly to you."

"Don't make me call the bouncer," she said.

"At the Four Seasons? You'd have to tip him before he threw you out."

"It's about my ex-husband," Susan said.

"The geek?"

"He's not a geek;" Susan said. "If you knew him, you'd kind of like him."

"Don't confuse me," I said.

Winter played "Lost in Loveliness." The waitress looked at my empty beer glass. I nodded. Susan's glass was still full.

"He came to see me last week," Susan said. "Out of the blue. I haven't seen him in years. He's in trouble. He needs help."

"I'm sure he does," I said.

"He needs help from you."

My second beer came. I thought about ordering a double shot of Old Thompsons to go with it but decided it was more manly to face this moment sober. I drank some of my beer.

"Okay," I said.

"I..." She stopped and looked out the windows for a moment. "I guess I'm kind of embarrassed to ask you," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "It is kind of embarrassing."

"But I am going to ask you anyway."

"Who else?" I said.

She nodded and picked up her glass and looked at it for a moment and put it down without drinking.

"Brad is being sued by a group of women who are charging him with sexual harassment."

I waited. Susan didn't say anything else.

"That's it?" I said.

"Yes."

"And what was it you thought I could do about it?"

"Prove them wrong," she said.

"Maybe they're right," I said.

"Brad is on the very edge of dissolution. If he gets dragged into court on this kind of thing ... he hasn't got enough money to defend himself."

"Or pay me," I said.

Susan nodded. "Or pay you," she said.

"That's encouraging," I said.

"I don't love him," Susan said. "Maybe I never did. And he hasn't been in my life for years, but ..."

"But you used to know him and you don't want to see him destroyed."

"Yes."

"And you don't know what else to do, or who else to ask."

"Yes."

"So," I said. "I'll take the case."

"And the fee?"

"If I get him off, you have to ball my socks off," I said.

"And if you don't get him off?"

"I have to ball your socks off."

The something I had no name for flickered in Susan's eyes.

"Sounds fair to me," she said.

"Okay, I'm on the case," I said. "Tell me about him."

"His name is Brad Sterling."

"Sterling?"

Susan looked down at the table.

"He changed it," she said.

"From Silverman. As in sterling silver, how precious."

"How un-Jewish," Susan said.

"How come you kept his name?"

"When we were first divorced I guess it was just easier. It was on my license, my social security card, my checking account."

"Uh huh."

"And I guess it was a way of saying that even if I weren't married, I had been."

"I suppose so, but by the time I was healthy enough to do that, I was healthy enough not to need to."

"Susan Hirsch," I said.

"Sounds odd, doesn't it."

"Makes me think of sex," I said.

"More than Silverman?"

"No, that makes me think of sex too."

"How about Stoopnagel?"

"Yeah," I said. "That makes me think of sex."

"I think I'm seeing a pattern here," Susan said.

"That's because you're a trained psychologist," I said. "Tell me about Sterling."

"I was a freshman at Tufts," Susan said. "He was at Harvard, my roommate and his roommate were cousins and we got fixed up."

Susan was many things, and almost all of them wondrous, but she was not succinct. I minded this less than I might have, because I loved to listen to her talk.

"He was a tackle on the Harvard football team. The only Jew ever to play tackle in the Ivy League, he used to say. I think he was kind of uneasy being Jewish at Harvard."

I made eye contact with the waitress and she nodded.

"He was very popular, had a lot of friends. Got by in class without studying much. I really liked him. We were married the week after graduation."

"Big wedding?"

"Yes," Susan said. "Have I never talked about this with you?

"No."

"Didn't you ever want to know?"

"I want to know what you want to tell me."

"Well, I saw no point to talking to you about other men in my life."

"Up to you," I said. "I don't need to know. And I don't need to pretend there weren't any."

She didn't speak for a time. She slowly turned her wine glass by the stem and looked at me as if thinking about things.

"I always assumed it would bother you," she said.

"I'm entirely fascinated with you," I said. "And what you are is a result of what you were, including the other men."

She was quiet again, looking at me, turning her glass. Then she smiled.

"It was a very big wedding at Memorial Chapel at Harvard. Reception at the Ritz."

"Brad's family had money," I said.

"Not after the reception," Susan said. "Actually, Brad's father ran a salvage business in Chelsea. But by the time I came along he'd moved the family to Wellesley. Brad went to Harvard. His sister went to Bryn Mawr."

The waitress brought me another beer. Susan took a sip of her wine. Racing to catch up.

"Then what?" I said.

"Then not much," Susan said. "His father bought us a little house in South Natick."

"Just across the line from Wellesley."

"Yes. Brad's mother was ten minutes away on Route 16."

"Perfect."

"And Brad got a job with an advertising agency in town."

"You?"

"I stayed home and wore cute aprons and redid my makeup every afternoon before he came home for supper."

"Supper?"

Susan smiled.

"I know," she said. "It was pathetic. I couldn't cook. I didn't want to learn. I hate to cook."

"Is that so," I said.

"The house was a four-room Cape with an unfinished attic. I could stand in the hall and see all four rooms."

"You can do that now," I said. "In your apartment."

"Yes, but I live there alone."

"Except for Pearl," I said.

"Pearl is not a person," Susan said.

"Try telling her that."

"I hated the house. I hated being alone in it all day, and then when he came home I got claustrophobic being with him all night, sharing the same bedroom, the same bath."

"Space is nice," I said.

"The feeling is still with me. It's why we don't live together."

"The way we live seems about right to me," I said.

"I know, but ... when I married Brad, if people moved to twin beds you figured divorce was imminent."

"You didn't work."

"No. It would have embarrassed Brad to have his wife working. It would have implied he couldn't support her."

"Children?"

"Oh, God, Yes. He wanted me to have children."

"And you didn't want to."

"Not then."

"Because?"

"I never knew. I just knew I couldn't."

"You know now?"

"It's something I've had a hard time thinking about," she said. "I must have sensed that this wasn't the right marriage to bring children into."

"Not so long ago you wanted us to have a kid."

"This isn't about me," Susan said.

"You think I'd try to rescue Brad from the feminists if you didn't ask me?"

"I know," Susan said. "But it's a part of my life I don't like to talk about."

"Like the part where you and I were separated?"

She was silent looking into her nearly full wine glass.

"If you had a patient," I said, "who couldn't talk about certain parts of her life, what would you tell her?"

Susan continued to look into her wine glass. Her shoulders looked stiff and angular. She didn't speak.

"I withdraw the question," I said.

She didn't look up from her wine glass.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice was tight.

"Got an address for Brad?" I said.

Silently she found a business card in her purse and took it out and handed it to me. The card read Brad Sterling, Promotions. Nice card. Good stock. Raised lettering. Not the kind of card you passed out if you were on the verge of dissolution. Unless you didn't want people to know you were on the verge of dissolution. Susan sat quietly while I looked at the card. Her shoulders hadn't eased much. She didn't look at me.

"You sure you want me to look into this?" I said.

"Absolutely," she said.

I nodded. This thing showed every sign of not working out well for me.

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

The 25th Spenser novel isn't a romance, but it's all about love. In early springtime, Susan Silverman, the elegant psychologist and lover who long ago softened the heart of Boston's preeminent thug-sized PI, asks Spenser to investigate the sexual harassment suit that has been filed against her first husband, Brad Sterling. Susan's ambivalence about Brad's predicament doesn't make the case easy for Spenser; nor does the gradually disclosed involvement of the noted Harvard Law School professor whose young wife is one of the plaintiffs. As Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, trace Brad's business dealings (he's a professional fund-raiser who's hired to run mammoth charity events), they also come up against a lawyer employed by the local organized crime crowd and some hired muscle associated with same, one of whom is found fatally shot in Brad's office. The next murder victim, a woman, turns out to be the director of a counseling service for ex-cons, which was also listed as benefiting from the most recent charity bash. What's more, the dead woman had her own connection to the still-missing Brad. Threatened repeatedly with fists and guns while coping with Susan's rare emotional uncertainty, Spenser stays the course to a resolution in which he and Susan both prevail. The mystery in this valentine may be insubstantial, but readers who pick up Parker's bestselling series for its characters and atmosphere will be delighted. BOMC main selection. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In Spenser's 25th appearance, the peerless Boston shamus is reduced to doing pro bono work on behalf of his lover Susan Silverman's scapegrace of an ex-husband. At least that's how it starts out. Brad Sterling (after sharing his last name with Susan, he anglicized himself out of it) is a promoter who arranges charity fund-raisers, and the fallout from the latest one, a big-tent event called Galapalooza, is a sexual harassment suit against him. Even after Brad crawls to his first ex (there are others) for help, he's too manly to admit to Spenser that he's in a jamtheir first scene together is all coy giggles on Brad's part, all slow burn on Spenser'sso there's nothing for Spenser to do but talk to the four well-connected complainants, who all, to a woman, tell him they have nothing to say about the case. The obligatory goons show up to threaten Spenser if he doesn't give up the case, but not only do they fail to muss his hair, they don't keep him from finding out that Galapalooza was a bust for participants besides Brad; it didn't raise money for anybodyexcept possibly an organization called Civil Streets, whose president, Carla Quagliozzi, is just as silent as the alleged harassees, and just as menacingvia her secret weapon, seamy attorney Richard Gavinas the goons. Then Brad takes a powder, leaving behind a dead body in his office. The cops are after Brad; the goons are after Spenser; and Spenser turns out, by the time he's fished the last secret out of Galapalooza, to be after just about every crimelord in Boston. Parker (Small Vices, 1997, etc.) writes as mean a page as ever. But this time the daisy chain of felonies is limp and illogical, and the deepmoralizingSusan's florid attitudinizing about her onetime husbandis merely self-important. Fortunately, there's always next year. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Spenser books are "cozy" mysteries that they take place in the Boston area and have gangsters. This one has more character revelation than most since it involves Susan Silverman's ex-husband and her thoughts about their marriage and the types of men that interest her. There is also some shady charity work, which, alas, sounds very true to life.

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Spenser rocks!! I love reading about his 'life' and being able to picture where he is since I live near Boston. Great imagination goes well with this book!

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